I went to a wedding recently at which the groom was an ex-public schoolboy in his twenties. No more prime specimen of girlie manhood are you likely to see. . . . He’d probably spent more getting his hair done than the bride had spent on her dress. It was stomach-churning.As Judie said when I read this to her, "I'd hate to think this is the future of manhood. Makes you want to watch a truck commercial or something."
Yet the effect of this wet noodle on the assembled women was electrifying. As he got up on stage and started telling his bride how much he loved her, bursting into tears within 30 seconds, they literally began to drool. For them, this Barbie Man was the new masculine ideal. And let me tell you, his bride was an absolute knockout. In the good old days, men would have conquered continents for less. Yet here she was, giving herself to a man she probably could have beaten in a fight.
Beyond the entertainment factor from Young's sabre-wielding, there lies a more serious point: why? The answer, according to Young, is yet another disturbing product of the sexual revolution. It's not just the "relentless feminist critique of masculinity that has been blaring out of our schools and universities since the 1960s." That's a big part of it, but there's another, sobering element, that has taken its toll on traditional masculinity: that "women’s sexual liberation that has frightened the horses, not the endless theorising that’s accompanied it. Men simply can’t deal with women expressing sexual desire — it reduces them to timid little mice."
Yes, the scourging of society as a result of the lovable 60s continues: it's the gift that keeps us giving, giving, giving - until all of our humanity has gone. ◙
